Archive for category SoftBank

As usual, MMS support in the international version of Galaxy Nexus does not work on SoftBank network as is, and requires a bit of tinkering. We gonna need usual toolset: phone, USB cable, adb, apktool and a text editor. There are a few explanations on the web, but they talk about connecting Nexus to the iPhone APN, so it won’t work if your previous smartphone was not iPhone. Here’s a procedure if you had Android device before.

Copy files from the phone

Unpack the framework and Mms.apk

$ apktool if framework-res.apk
$ apktool d Mms.apk

Make changes

The file we are interested in is res/xml/mms_config.xml, you may want to change it directly, but your phone might stop working on some other network, so I prefer another approach. We can create separate file, which will work on SoftBank network only. This new file should be called res/xml-mcc440-mnc20/mms_config.xml, 440 is the country code for Japan, and 20 is SoftBank network. The file contents is the following:

After reboot, please, don’t forget to input proper APN settings for Open SoftBank.

Downloads

Just in case you don’t like to tinker with Android internals, here’s a ready-to-use download, SBM_Galaxy_Nexus_4.0.2_ICL53F_Mms.apk. This file should be put into your phone as described in “Put results back to the phone” part. It is intended to be used on Android 4.0.2, specifically version ICL53F, and may not work on other versions. As soon as I upgrade to 4.0.4, I will put a new file for download in this topic as well. Well, here’s SBM_Galaxy_Nexus_4.0.4_IMM76I_Mms.apk for version 4.0.4. And also SBM_Galaxy_Nexus_4.1.1_JRO03C_Mms.apk for Jelly Bean 4.1.1.

Final thoughts

There is still one problem left, Mms.apk requires working internet data connection to download MMS contents. As I have remembered from my previous HTC phone, it was possible (on Froyo) to keep data connection off, and Mms application will enable it for a short period of time just to download MMS messages. Unfortunately, this does not work on Galaxy Nexus yet.

Finally I’ve got time to prepare my personal Froyo image for HTC Desire, which is supposed to be stock WWE image with some tweaks and changes, that should allow it to work flawlessly on SBM network and don’t consume too much battery. First, the emergency call codes are supposed to be changed to the following (110 — police, 119 — fire/ambulance, and it still beats me what 118 means):

ro.ril.oem.ecclist=110,118,119

Besides the radio options used in the previous versions, there are a few new ones, not found anywhere else except the Softbank ROM image:

Not particularly sure what do they do, I think I might change hotspotUI to “yes” someday later. Also, “ro.telephony.default_network=2″ does not agree to the following piece found later in the same file, I wonder which one takes precedence, and what is network #2 in this context:

Softbank has decided to stop accepting orders for HTC Desire from Jul, 29th. Instead they brought out a press-release about “Desire II”, with LCD screen instead of OLED (probably because of Samsung OLED display shortage).

There are SMS messages, which can contain about 160 characters. Japanese uses multi-byte encodings, so the actual character count is much lower. Also, people like to send pictures taken with the built-in cameras, music and other things which don’t fit well into 160 byte limit.

Therefore, MMS (multimedia messaging service) was born. It works like this: you get a short SMS message using SMS protocol, and then your phone has to use data connection to receive the rest of the message from the server. SMS messages work everywhere, but ways and protocols for retrieving the actual message are different from one provider to another. If these protocols are not followed, only “subject” line of MMS message will get through, which is actually delivered via usual SMS.

This is why we need specially tailored application to receive MMS messages on softbank, another specially tailored app to receive MMS messages on DoCoMo and so on. Also, this is the reason, why originally iPhone did not support MMS (it was added about a year later) and why HTC Desire still (oficially) does not support MMS, however there are a few versions of custom-made software, which, more or less, aleviate this problem.

It’s very distracting, but every time HTC Desire lost signal for a while, it tries to reacquire time information and for some unknown reason there’s no TZ info included. There’s no solution for this problem, except moving to the area of better reception quality. Native SB firmware has the same problem.

Just took my A8181 which I got from HK to Softbank after flashing one of the ROMs above, shop people confused for a bit as IMEI wasn’t in their “stock database” but eventually caved in and gave me a sim w/smartphone data plan.

They spent about 30 minutes poking around the phone, comparing it with the plastic model they had in store “hey why it says softbank here and only says HTC on this one??” and had to make a few calls to their boss to confirm. I *think* i heard them mumble “rooted”? once before but I’m not sure the guy was too far.

I’m sure I would have to get a 2 year contract with a useless phone otherwise, just to use it’s sim.

Looks like there’s hope to get imported phones to work legally in SB network.

I’m kinda puzzled, because my softbank phone totally refuses to send any SMS messages to any other providers (DoCoMo, Au), however it works absolutely perfectly with international phone numbers and sends SMS overseas just fine.

UPDATE: here’s a catch, overseas SMS costs 100yen, if I sent about 20 messages I can easily double my phone bill.

There are a few parameters, which might result in better battery life, so I copied them from Softbank ROM to 1.21 WWE, rebuilt and battery life went back to normal. Just in case, here are those parameters: